


The King and M'Baku

by tehtarik



Category: Black Panther (2018), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M'Baku makes a very long dramatic speech near the end, M/M, an accidental fic, not fluff not angst, not sure what, something of a character study but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-05
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-27 10:21:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13878852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tehtarik/pseuds/tehtarik
Summary: “Tell me,” said T’Challa, “how did you find me?”“One of my fishers found you.  You were blocking the river. You were lying in the middle of the river on a bed of rubbish. You were belly-up like a dead crocodile with flies on its tongue in the middle of the river. The river flooded and washed away crops and whole villages. Some kind of king you are!”“M’Baku,” said T’Challa tiredly. “Please do not tell stories.”----M'Baku fished his king out of the Omoogun River





	The King and M'Baku

M’Baku fished his King out of the Omoogun River.

The Omoogun River slid away from the frothing plunge pools of the Warrior Falls, nosing through Jabariland, and then through a densely forested valley between the Wakandan Ranges. On the other side of the mountains, it thinned into canals choked with water hyacinth, sometimes running into large drains or flooded fields, before feeding into the Ruzizi.

One of the Jabari fishers saw the King tangled among fallen logs and a mat of floating vegetation, and sent word to M’Baku in the mountains. Down came M’Baku, down the icy passes into the warmth of the lowlands, into the water of the Omoogun, wading through the reed swamps, waist deep.

He dislodged the debris and swept away the logs with his hands, and the King came loose, the current bringing him right into M’Baku's arms.

And M’Baku hoisted his King up and carried him out of the water.

 

* * *

 

 

A Jabari leader does not stoop low to salvage the detritus of rivers. This includes things like rotting lala palm fronds, or carcasses waiting to be picked apart by scavengers, or kings who have been flung over the teeth of the Falls.

To one of his men, M’Baku said, “It was _you_ who found him. It was _you_ who carried him out of the river to me.”

The Jabari fisher understood. “ _I_ found him, Great Gorilla. _I_ carried him to you.”

They passed Hanuman’s holy groves on the way back home. The guardians of the Jabari wood came to greet M’Baku and his men and the King, who lay motionless on a wide cart.  Where the groves ended against a wall of cliffs, Hanuman’s effigy looked out of the mountains.

Hanuman’s face, sculpted only partly by Jabari tools, and the rest by the razoring winds, and the rest by the will of Hanuman’s Own Self, did not deign to tip Their chin down and look upon the King on the cart. Two of the Jabari guardians scaled the cliff beside Hanuman’s face, all the way up to the God’s eyes, bundles of Jabari branches strapped to their backs. They stood in the vast, sepulchral eye sockets and lit fires in the eyes of Hanuman. The wood burned an electric blue with the hottest of flames, as Hanuman woke up.

 _Tell me something to make me laugh, M’Baku of the Jabari_ , said Hanuman.

M’Baku gestured at his king on the cart. “Look, great Hanuman. I found him in the river - the King of Cats. He drowns like one too.”

Hanuman laughed with the laugh of a mob of macaques. The hanging thicket of icicles that was Their beard shook and shimmered in the afternoon slant of light. All the Jabari laughed as well.

_As funny as always, M’Baku of the Jabari. And what am I to do with a child of Bast?_

“Strange as it may be to believe, great Hanuman, but he allowed me to live once.” Before Hanuman, M’Baku got down on one knee and rested his forehead against his knobkierie. “I only ask that I may continue to uphold Jabari honour, even to those who are not friends to our people.”

Hanuman seemed to consider. The flames in Their eyes darkened into a shade that was almost warm, almost human.

 _If he gave you back your life, then you owe him three, M’Baku of the Jabari_ . _Now don’t bring any more children of Bast to me, or I will lose my temper._

“We have yet to see you throw a tantrum, holy Hanuman,” M’Baku chuckled as he rose, “but we will leave you in peace.”

A sudden, violent draught shook the flames out of Hanuman’s eye sockets and sent a blast of snow through the trees, down onto the cart where the King lay, covering him. M’Baku was satisfied.

The Jabari continued their journey back up the mountains, passing the cloud forests with their damp mists and tree ferns, passing their own hillside plantations of cassava and ginger and yams and peppers tended by Jabari farmers, passing the alpine fields, before finally crossing the snowline into their city of ice and wood, strung between the craggy rock.

No King of Wakanda had crossed into Jabariland for more than a hundred years.

 

* * *

 

 

They had none of those shiny vibranium-powered cryogenic facilities that the other Wakandan tribes had to preserve the lives of their terminally ill. The Jabari physicians treated the King’s wounds as best as they could, but still they could not wake him or revive his failing vitals.

So M’Baku laid T’Challa, the King, on the frosty floor of his fortress, still blanketed in Hanuman’s snow.

Late at night, when M’Baku did not sleep, he came and sat beside T’Challa on the floor. The King had shrunk. The river had shrunk him. The Falls had spun and wrung him out in the plunge pools. Maybe the carrion-eating storks had picked at his flesh and eaten a portion of him. Or maybe the King had always seemed small to M’Baku.

And yet, not so long ago:

these were the hands that furled into the very fists that drove their knuckles against M’Baku. These were the ribs into which M’Baku wedged his blade, that folded his King over and sent him underwater briefly. This was the head that kept the skull that M’Baku had tried to clobber. These were the legs, the thighs that wrapped around M’Baku’s neck and chest, that locked him into place and promised to hurl him over the Falls and yet at the same time, kept him from falling. This was the body that made M’Baku yield, that made him, gasping for breath, the world roaring in his ears with the sound of the water and his own heartbeat slamming in his throat, look up into the faces of his own men and women and see the uncertainty in their eyes as they contemplated the possibility of their leader’s death.

“You should have yielded to me, King Cat,” said M’Baku. “I would have let you live. And this wouldn’t have been your fight.”

T’Challa did not answer.

“If you don’t wake up,” M’Baku continued, irritated, “then I cannot repay my debts.”

 

* * *

 

This is what the Jabari believe: someone does a good turn for you, and you must repay with three times the gratitude they deserve. There are no clear dictates on what exactly one must do. There is no way to tell just exactly what one measurement of gratitude is. Three times, the Jabari are told. Now go and be in debt. Tradition is the debt that keeps you grounded, that ties you to your ancestors, praise be to them, who in turn are indebted to Hanuman. Now go. Go and tie yourselves to your children, go and be indebted to your parents and your elders, go and repay your debts. You will learn how, but go, now.

The city of the Jabari was a cluster of separate communities, sundered by the landscape of harsh outcrops and jagged, snow-ridged precipices, and yet connected to each other by long open-air walkways, pieced together from fortified Jabari wood. M’Baku walked along one of these passages, visiting one part of the city to another, as he always did.

Everywhere he went, everything was known to him. The houses of his people, tucked into crooks and clefts of the mountains were warm, brightly-lit. The halls were full of laughter and arguments, chants to Hanuman, amplified prayers and preaching from the priests. The smell of peppery stews, and the spice of pastries, palm wine bread, bean cakes and fried arrowroot.

A little girl, not older than six, ran up to M’Baku, breath puffing white and floaty from her lips. He knew her as Folasade, the child of two of his warriors. She had a reputation as being one of the brightest and bravest of the Jabari children, and many were already saying that she should be a priest of Hanuman, or perhaps even the chief strategist of the tribe.

“Great Gorilla!” she cried. “Is it the truth that there is a stranger sitting in your throne room? Can I see who it is?”

“You are right,” he told her. “There is a stranger in my house, and it is the King Cat. Now you better run off back home to your family before King Cat comes out to roam.”

Folasade balled her hands into fists, and glared up at M’Baku. The short frizz of her hair seemed to crackle. “You lie, Great Gorilla! Right to my face! There is no King Cat, only the Black Panther who is the king of Wakanda, and he has nothing to do with us, Jabari.”

“He will come and he will bite your head off. And claw out your liver.”

“You are still lying!” Her brow was creased with indignation. “I will fight you for your lies, Great Gorilla.”

M’Baku glared right back at her. He lost.

He broke into laughter and scooped little Folasade up into his arms. “Fine. I will carry you to your home myself, tiny Sade, and if you don’t struggle too much, I will tell you how Hanuman stole the panther’s fur and hung it upon the highest branches of the tallest baobab in the world.”

And that placated her for a while.

 

* * *

 

 

The King’s awakening was violent, as though he had been wrenched back to life, incomplete and thirsting, his eyes still mirroring that dark, glutinous membrane between sleep and death. His skin sheened with sweat or ice, the magnetic purple of the Heart-Shaped Herb radiating across the veins of his neck and chest and face, pulsing with his heartbeat. M’Baku did not go near the King. T’Challa had snow in his hair.

 

* * *

 

 

M’Baku and his King stood knee-deep in the snow, outside the royal hall. The ground sloped beneath their feet. Behind them, the black slant of the sky, nicked with scratchy stars. People had come out of their homes to stare at the King. Never before had most of them set eyes upon him, or any King of Wakanda. Among the onlookers was little Folasade, wrapped and hooded in thick fur, open-mouthed and speechless for once,  but when she caught M’Baku’s eye, a frown crumpled her face and she put her hands on her hips.

T’Challa was hardly recognisable from the limp half-drowned form he’d been a few days ago. For starters, he was upright. He looked more like a king again, though a king in pain.

No, that was not right: he wasn’t a king anymore. Not after the fall.

“You would have recovered sooner and been on your way,” M’Baku said, “but we did not have any of the pretty medical technology that the other tribes use.”

“M’Baku,” said T’Challa. “We will talk later, when all this is done, and Wakanda is at peace again.”

“Talk, talk, talk,” said M’Baku rudely. He did not care very much for his king. “Leave your talk for your council.”

T’Challa smiled at this, and it was the first time that M’Baku felt at ease since he’d woken up. “Yes, we will talk. Because we have much to talk about, you and I, about the future of our people.”

“We have never shared a people,” M’Baku scoffed. And because he was tired of T’Challa trying to open him up, and crack promises out of him, he said, “I can tell you the quickest way off these mountains and back to your golden city.”

“That would be appreciated.”

“Straight down the snow field until you come to the end.”

T’Challa’s eyes narrowed into the darkness. “It looks like a steep drop. Is there a path down at the end?”

“Yes, when you jump off,” said M’Baku, grinning. Showing his teeth at T’Challa. “That’s the quickest path off this mountain.”

Energy rippled across the teeth of the necklace T’Challa wore. The vibranium panther suit unfurled from the points and knitted itself into existence over his skin. The short vibranium claws clicked out of his hands.

“Maybe I shall take your advice,” said T’Challa, unfazed, and he grinned right back at M’Baku.

 

* * *

 

 

Hanuman was not pleased to see M’Baku.

 _I was sleeping_ , said the God, and Their voice was ponderous, dreary with the sleep of rocks.

“It is noon,” said M’Baku. He sat down on a boulder in front of the huge face in the mountain.

Hanuman snorted. The treetops shuddered and a sudden gust of air blew past M’Baku. It smelled sickly like fermenting melon, like the clammy growth of mushrooms.

 _I have plans tonight,_ declared Hanuman. _I am going down to the grasslands to party with hyenas._

“Great Hanuman,” said M’Baku doubtfully. “We both know that you are not nocturnal.”

In response, Hanuman barked with laughter. They were one-eyed, the blue Jabari flames flaring in the left eye socket, while the right remained hollow and dark. The wood had declined to be lit in there. Or perhaps Hanuman had declined to open that other eye.

 _M’Baku of the Jabari_ , They continued, _tell me something funny._

M’Baku thought for a moment. “There was a man that was brought into my house. White. From the race of colonisers. I told him I would feed him to the children of the Jabari.”

Hanuman laughed again, sounding like the howls of an uncivil troop of chimpanzees.

“And he believed me.”

 _Good_ , Hanuman said. _Now go away, M’Baku of the Jabari._

“I am here to ask about the fate of my people,” M’Baku pressed. “And what they deserve. The last time I rose for them, I was thrown back down, even though I fought in your name. But now Wakanda is at war with itself.”

 _The last time you came, you asked to uphold Jabari honour_ , answered Hanuman, _so go and uphold Jabari ways. And I already asked you to leave. If you don’t, I might really lose my temper._

“Yet you have never been angry at your people before.”

 

* * *

 

 

The Jabari went to war.

They left their homes in the mountains and went down to the lowlands, to the fringes of Mount Bashenga and waited in the cover of the jungle.

“Why are we hiding here?” one of his warriors, Gbenga, asked.

“Wait,” said M’Baku to his warriors who stood behind him, their skin coated with white clay, prayers to Hanuman etched into the hafts of their swords and spears. “They don't need us yet.”

The battle rang and raged with the Border Tribe’s scintillating shields, and the clash of swords and spears from the Dora Milaje, the bellowing of the rhinos. This was Wakanda now: a ragged organism heaving, splitting, gutting itself. Vibranium hummed and splintered and glowed everywhere, projectiles cut their arcs through the moving flesh of the battle.

“What about now?” demanded Gbenga again. “We’re not afraid to die, Great Gorilla.”

“Wait, wait,” said M’Baku. “They can still do without us.”

An airborne transport speeding toward the perimeter of the cloaking field exploded after being hit by a volley of missiles from another aircraft.

Once again, Gbenga, who also happened to be the father of Folasade, said: “We didn’t come down from the mountains just to watch, did we?”

“Like father, like daughter,” M’Baku gritted out, thinking of fierce little Folasade, who was not afraid to challenge him. “I said wait! They can still need us _more_ before we go to their aid.”

And there, in the distance, in front of a hangar, near one of the many entrances to the vibranium mines, his black suit veined with purple, was T’Challa. This was the sign that M’Baku did not know he was waiting for.

He turned to face the assembly of Jabari. He raised his knobkierie high in one hand, his sharpened Ida in the other. His weapons turned hot in his palms, not with the power of any vibranium cell, but with the strength of their God.

“Glory to Hanuman!” M’Baku said, and the Jabari spilled beyond the jungle, into the world.

 

* * *

 

 

M’Baku looked out of his throne room across the blue snowfields, the light deepening. The suspended branches of jackalberry wood swayed with only the gentlest movement, despite the room being exposed to the bitterest of winds. The branches bore the names of the dead, the ancestors of his people, inscribed into sacred wood. The families of the recently deceased, after cremation of their dead, would hang their branches here in M’Baku’s throne room. Whenever the branches moved, the dead were invoked, called to be perpetual guardians of an isolated people.

“You have visitors, Lord M’Baku,” said one of his guards, disrupting his reverie.

M’Baku sat down on his bare wooden throne. In came T’Challa, flanked by two of the Dora Milaje.

He would never admit this, but in his chest, there was an upwelling of something like hope. An opportunity. For whom or for what, he could not put to words.

“M’Baku,” said T’Challa. “You know why I am here.”

“The King of Wakanda wants to build a bridge.” M’Baku was disinterested. T’Challa had a diplomatic tone in his voice. He sounded like a bureaucrat. “What bridge do you want to build here, King Cat? Nobody has wanted to cross into Jabariland for more than a century.”

“No,” T’Challa said, amused, his expression placid. “I want to continue on the bridge that _you_ started.”

At this, M’Baku slapped his knee and chuckled. “You are my favourite king so far.”

T’Challa only smiled briefly. “We are not so different as you think, the Jabari and the rest of Wakanda.”

M’Baku rose from his seat and came towards T’Challa, ignoring the hawk-eyed glares of the Dora Milaje. “The short answer, King Cat, is no. No, I do not want a place in your Council, in your shiny palace, or your shiny city.”

“Ever since I’ve been king, M’Baku, you’ve never stopped trying to thwart me in some way or another. Even though I won, even though you yielded to me.”

M’Baku stiffened. “You are saying that I did not fight honourably.”

“If that was indeed what I was saying, then I would be a liar.” T’Challa’s voice dropped. “What I’m saying is, I think I understand. But I want to hear it from you.”

The fluorescence of the inbuilt ceiling lights reflected in the King’s eyes. The necklace of vibranium teeth glinted against his chest. T’Challa raised a hand to the Dora Milaje.

“Leave us,” he told them. The Dora Milaje rapped their chests with their fists, turned on their heels and left.

M’Baku dismissed his own Jabari guards as well.

“We are going to fight. Don't come in until one of us is dead!” M’Baku called after them. T’Challa only exhaled and shook his head.

Now there was nobody in the throne room except M’Baku and the King. And the King put his hand on M’Baku’s shoulder, fingers clenching into muscle.

“Tell me,” said T’Challa, “how did you find me?”

“If I had lost you, then you wouldn’t be right here under my nose, intruding in my lands.”

“When Killmonger threw me over the falls. You know what I mean.”

So the King suspected something. M’Baku smiled a slow smile.

“Oh, that. One of my fishers found you.  You were blocking the river. You were lying in the middle of the river on a bed of rubbish. You were belly-up like a dead crocodile with flies on its tongue in the middle of the river. The river flooded and washed away crops and whole villages. Some kind of king you are!”

“M’Baku,” said T’Challa tiredly. “Please do not tell stories.”

“The Jabari tell stories all the time. Since you don’t believe in ours, maybe you should tell me yours.”

He shrugged the King’s grip off his shoulders and walked to the end of the throne room, behind his seat, and looked out. T’Challa came to stand beside him. Shoulder to shoulder they stood.

“Very well,” said T’Challa. “There is a memory that I have from the time I was unconscious. It goes like this: when I fell over the Falls, when I was drowning, it felt like the life was being beaten out of me. I fought the drowning. I fought the stones, the rapids, the currents, the pestle and mortar of the river. I fought it but I was helpless. And then I got caught in the net of a fisherman, and the fisherman was you, M’Baku. You carried me out with the net of your own arms.”

“What a stupid thing to dream about,” said M’Baku, yawning. “I hate fish. Why would I go fishing?”

Thick drifts of snow gusted past the throne room. He felt T’Challa’s arm against his, the rigidness of his poise. Perhaps it was the cold. Perhaps the King wasn’t as collected or as unconflicted as he appeared to be.

“It is good that you came,” said M’Baku, “but my answer is still no.”

The King did not say anything for a long while. For a long while they stood in silence. In his silence, the King did not give away anything, any hint of emotion, whether disappointment, or even if he was gearing up to launch another argument at M’Baku.

“I will go, then,” said T’Challa. “But before I do, let me tell you this: that I am the king of Wakanda. When I was crowned King, all the tribes of Wakanda shouted their praises for me, swore their loyalty to me. All except you. Only you rose up out of nowhere to fight me.”

“Nowhere?” M’Baku derided, suddenly angry. “That’s where the Jabari sit in this world, in the eyes of every Wakandan king. Nowhere.”

T’Challa ignored him. “Don’t hide behind your anger. Listen for once. The other tribes of Wakanda followed tradition. What about you? Are you going to pledge your loyalty to me? I am your King, M’Baku. And I ask you this: sing your praises for me.”

The King’s eyes glittered with a strange mixture of half- triumph, half-tenderness. It sharpened the steel in M’Baku’s own eyes. It turned his vertebrae into blades sticking out of his spine. It made his blood turn to boiling liquid ochre.

“I will not,” spat M’Baku. “The Jabari only praise our own ancestors, and Hanuman, who has watched over us all these centuries.”

T’Challa broke his gaze. The sorrow in his eyes was liquid, raw. “Then I have misunderstood you. I am not your King.”

He turned away from M’Baku. He walked past the throne, past the hanging branches, toward the doorway. Kimoyo beads around his wrist. He closed his fingers around one of them, perhaps to summon the Dora Milaje.

And in that split second, M’Baku knew that he was not finished. Not with T’Challa. Not now, not for a long time.

“You are T’Challa, Panther King,” M’Baku called after his King’s retreating form.

T’Challa froze. He turned his head slightly to the side, so his face was a sharp profile against the doorway. He let go of his kimoyo bracelet.

“King of Cats, King of Wakanda, King of Wakanda, King of Wakanda. Wakanda, that spurned the Jabari for centuries. Your Wakanda prospers, while my people live confined to the mountains. You come demanding praise without actually wanting it; you come inflicting your tests upon the Jabari.”

T’Challa’s hands hung straight down his sides, palms curled into loose fists.

“What, in the name of Hanuman, do you want to hear from me? I will say this: that I watched you from the mountains and I opposed you, Panther King, sheathed in vibranium. I will say that I came down and waded through the mud of the lowlands, past the noise of your city to the Falls where you were crowned King. I will say that I wanted to crush you. I will say that I broke my spear into your ribs, that I rained my fists upon you, my King. I will say that I wounded you and I tasted the blood of your wounds, and in return, you cracked the mask that I wore and broke me open to my own people. To the peoples of Wakanda.”

And now, T’Challa had turned fully to face him. He nodded, a barely perceptible movement. _Continue_ , he seemed to say. And even if that wasn’t what he meant, M’Baku would have continued anyway. His rage unravelled out of him, unravelled him into territory he had never known could exist.

“I wrestled my King and I lost. Who knew that you would fall off those same rocks, un-kinged? That the river would eat you and your precious Council abandon you?”

M’Baku was now so close to T’Challa that he was staring down at his King. He could reach out; he could seize him by the front of his shirt, lift him off his heels, maybe throw him out into the snow, maybe embrace him, maybe press his face into the side of his neck, his anger and his grievances and his longing against his King’s chest. T’Challa did not flinch. T’Challa did not look away.

All he said was, “Yet you are still not finished.”

He was right.

M’Baku said: “You are T’Challa, King of Wakanda. But when you were brought into Jabariland you were an outcast, like us. And this is the last thing I will say to you: that when you were unseated by your own, it was I who dragged you out of the water like dead fish, half-buried in silt, and covered you in Hanuman’s snow and laid you to sleep on the floor of my house. It was I, M’Baku of the Jabari tribe, who carried you in my own arms out of the Omoogun River.”

T’Challa took M’Baku’s head in his hands. M’Baku felt the imprints of his fingers against the back of his skull. If his King so chose, he could slip into his vibranium suit and sink claws into M’Baku’s head. If that happened, then that happened.

But M’Baku would not back down, because the Jabari were warriors, and he would not retreat if challenged by his enemies. T’Challa was not an enemy, but he certainly was a challenge. In the end, there was only one way to go, and so M’Baku went forward and kissed his King.

 

* * *

 

 

The God, Hanuman, wandered out of the salty mangroves and riverside temples that used to house Them many aeons ago. They left behind dense jungle and crossed deserts until They had set foot in a different continent. Hanuman had hands, large perfect hands with opposable thumbs, all-encompassing, good for holding other hands that might need holding, good for grasping at tree trunks and eating them whole, should They ever desire to do so.

Hanuman roamed without purpose, crossing more deserts, floodplains, savannahs, plateaus, lakes, and most interesting of all, settlements of various peoples. They passed along the Nile, full of temples to different Gods, to Isis and Ptah and Horus. They passed through Yorubaland, populated with the Orishas. Oshun and Yemoja and Shango. Some of the people started following Hanuman in Their wanderings, which surprised and pleased them, and soon They had a people of Their own. Hanuman led Their people to Wakanda, where they would become the ancestors of the Jabari.

Listen: you can hear Hanuman’s voice, the slur of glaciers, the rumble of avalanches, the high-pitched laughter of monkeys.

There is only one known story of Hanuman ever losing Their temper. And that was a thousand years ago or more, when the tribes of Wakanda had begun their great war for vibranium, and the Jabari were badly diminished in numbers.

That was when Hanuman, upon seeing the suffering of Their people decimated by warfare, flew into a rage and thundered onto the plains, hollering, shattering Their knuckles into the ground, uprooting jungles.

That was also when Bast intervened, vaulting down from the ancestral plane, and creating the first Black Panther whom all the tribes deferred to. All but Hanuman’s tribe. Instead, Hanuman led Their people into the mountains.

This is one version of the tale, anyway.

 

* * *

 

 

That night, M’Baku dreamt. He dreamt of the Warrior Falls again, and how he fought against his King. Right to the edge, the water spilling over, a primordial pulse in his ears. T’Challa had a spear against his throat, his knees on M’Baku’s chest, pinning him down. The back of M’Baku’s head was over the drop, and he hung there, pillowed by air and imminent death.

Then T’Challa broke the spear into two, and with his eyes full of kindness, full of gentleness, said, _No, this is not the way. You do not owe me anything_.

The world flipped over, righted itself. The tribes standing on the ledges along the tiers of the Falls were walls of green and red and blue and yellow, searingly bright, as though the sun shone on a shifting, harmonising mosaic of witnesses. Among them, the Jabari. And M’Baku was not in the water anymore.

Instead, he stood right at the top of the Falls, closest to the mountains. Still in the pool below was T’Challa, who looked up at him, his expression full of the same warmth, the same triumph, and satisfaction. The thunder that M’Baku heard was not from the plunging falls but the cries of all the peoples, and M’Baku’s voice was in the midst of the clamour, shouting for his King, for _T’Challa! T’Challa! T’Challa_!

  


**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading


End file.
